


Palette

by MarkoftheAsphodel



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Fire Emblem Series
Genre: Awkward Romance, Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Emotional Baggage, F/M, File Under Lukas Has Problems it's like a subgenre right?, Major Illness, Or the lack thereof, Parent-Child Relationship, Sibling Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 12:38:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11714568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarkoftheAsphodel/pseuds/MarkoftheAsphodel
Summary: Seven times Lukas probably should’ve felt more and what transpired the one time that he did.





	Palette

**Author's Note:**

> I have used my default headcanon names for the unnamed Shitty Brother and Ladyfriend referenced in FE15. If you have encountered any of my other stories featuring the Ladyfriend under the name used here, this is not necessarily intended to be in the same continuity as the other stories. I just didn't feel like inventing multiple Ladyfriends for different stories when one will suffice. If you'd rather they'd be in the same continuity that's OK too. :)

_red_

His brother is a liar.

“Lukas did it,” says Theo, blaming Lukas for the broken statuette of Mother Mila that once occupied a proud place in the vestibule, the one granted to their great-grandfather by the queen.

Lukas did not do any such thing. He never toppled Mila from her pedestal, nor did he piece her back together and set her in place once more in an attempt to hide the damage. Lukas is not tall enough to reach the top of that pedestal. Lukas isn’t that stupid. But his mother is away, and faced with a choice the servants are going to take the word of Master Theo over Master Lukas, and so Lukas is sent to kneel at the Mother’s shrine for hours and beg her forgiveness.

This is not justice and he should be angry. Righteously so, with the anger of the heroes in the stories his mother tells him. He should stand his ground, proclaim himself free of guilt and denounce Theo… but to whom? He kneels before the Mother for three long hours, until his knees hurt and then go past hurting to feel like jelly, but he does not pray for forgiveness for something he never did. 

_Witness me, Mother._

_orange_

One of the maids turns him in, lets his father know that Master Lukas has a forbidden book hidden under his mattress. Lukas protests to no avail that the book is about knights and war and ought to be considered part of his martial instruction and his father makes him watch as the book burns. 

The fire doesn’t take at first, and Lukas wonders if there’s going to be some miracle. Then he sees the corner of one page darken, then the edges of the paper develop a dark scalloped border that creeps inward as Lukas watches, then the flames spring up from the scallops. The Mother has not spared him this time either, and the realization he’s been let down makes Lukas wonder if he should shout, should douse the fire, should stick his hand into the blaze and rescue his book.

Lukas resists the call of the flames. When the orange glow fades to gray, he sees a few fragments of the book yet unburnt among the ashes, words still visible and part of a picture that’s survived— this, then, is the miracle. Lukas takes a stick and pokes at the remains of his book until each last scrap falls to dust. 

If the destruction is fated, then let it be thorough.

_yellow_

A reasonable person ought to be afraid, Lukas thinks, as he tries to calculate the width of the ravine. The horse is seventeen hands high, the drop to the bottom of the ravine easily five times that, the gap that he must cross at least three times as far as the horse is tall…

Lukas works the figures as Theo and their companions laugh behind him. Cross the gap, spear the hornet’s nest on the tree on the far side, carry it back. As he sizes up the probability that he and the horse will not, in fact, end up at the bottom of the ravine— hornets or no hornets— Lukas hears himself being mocked, his hesitation taken for cowardice. Aren’t cowards afraid? He’s not experiencing fear. Lukas only wants to make certain the numbers are in his favor.

They are. Without warning to Theo or the others he spurs the horse into motion, making a broad loop around them as his mount gathers speed. As the rim of the ravine approaches Lukas focuses on the opposite bank, the tree and the hornets’ nest. He can sense something leap in his heart in the moment all four hooves leave the earth and they become airborne, but he does not look down. He thinks of nothing but the destination as he spears the bulbous and pale nest swarming with insects. This will be the hard part, keeping the nest aloft even as the creatures come down, hoping to sting him and to sting the poor horse that can’t possibly understand why it’s being ridden to such a purpose. Another loop to gather speed with a mad buzz in his ears and then it’s back across the ravine, and this time in the strange moment he’s suspended between sky and rock Lukas has his eyes fixed on Theo and the others. 

Theo looks ill.

There are no cheers as Lukas smashes the hornets’ nest into the earth in front of brother and their companions.

_green_

It should bother him that he doesn’t have what his brother will have. Lukas knows that because everyone in their social sphere makes sure that he ought to know it. Some try to cultivate him, pointing out how much better it would be for the family line if only someone with the talents possessed by Lukas had been the heir. Others in turn impart the opposite lesson, as though they’ve seen some nascent sign of rebellion, of treachery in him and plan to quash it before any trouble begins. They need not have bothered.

Lukas knows the order of the world. He exists in part because even in the happy land of Mila’s blessings not all children survive the cradle and, put bluntly, his father needed a contingency plan in case something befell Theo. Lukas is that contingency plan. If Theo remains in fine health, Lukas is merely redundant. He knows his place and accepts it because that is the price of his very existence; had some infallible seer told his father that Theo would live to a great age and secure the family line in perpetuity, Lukas would not now be enjoying the sunlight.

That these walls, these halls, the gardens and estates and every servant bound to them will not ever be his doesn’t perturb Lukas nearly as much as the idea that all these things, the entire holdings of their family, will be governed by someone as petty as Theo.

Perhaps were Lukas more invested in justice than he is, he’d find a way to make that not happen.

_blue_

Lukas hears the silent words between the discreet phrases said by the healer and understands that his mother will not make a full recovery. She may never speak again; her right arm is likely to hang lifeless at her side for the rest of her days. But as his mother is the wife of a nobleman the healer’s words are constrained, and so the rest of the family hears something entirely different.

Lukas hears his father imploring his mother— Speak, darling, say only my name and let me see that you still know me— and wonders which of parents is being tormented more by this. On his own visits Lukas speaks to his mother as though she is perfectly sensible but expects nothing in return from her, yet even so on the day his mother manages to look into his eyes and move her lips he fancies the words “I love you” might be the intent, could well be the intent. 

His father weeps when Lukas reports this attempt at communication and all Lukas can think is that it’s been a decade since he saw his father in tears. As days pass with no improvement, Lukas wonders if he’d given into the collective delusion in the household and seen some encouraging sign that wasn’t there. He’s certain he will never again hear his mother truly say those words of love, never again feel her fingers close around his with the affection only she ever showed him, never again be her escort to a ball or simply pass the time with her in the conservatory on a brisk day when the amaryllis blaze in stars of red and white. He has effectively lost her already, and instead of the valley of despondency that his father inhabits Lukas imagines the future as a featureless plateau stretching ever onwards, unwelcoming yet passable.

Lukas watches his father’s unrestrained grief and compares that to the strange calm in his own heart and wonders if there might, in truth, be something wrong in his soul. Surely, a young man should be bowed with grief over the fate of his own mother. Surely he should excoriate himself for having dispassion at this time of all times.

“Pray with me,” commands his father, and Lukas lowers his head in obedience. He prays for his mother to be well. He leaves the interpretation of those words up to Mother Mila.

_violet_

Beatrice smiles behind a fan. She has a lovely smile, artfully composed to hide a crooked tooth just as the fan draws attention to the spot on her chin and makes art of it. Beatrice is clever and charming and he enjoys her company more than that of any other. He brings her sprays of flowers— white freesia for the plum-colored knot of her hair, orchids to be a splash of color at her wrist and her throat— and she wears them as one would a love token. She holds poetry readings, where books and wine are passed around with equal fervor, and Lukas feels giddy as he reads aloud of the the violet spark that strikes the brain, the epiphanic prelude to lovers coming together.

He borrows many a slim volume of poetry from her, as his aging and distracted father no longer cares whether his contingency plan of a younger son reads trash or not. Lukas has not applied his mind to the science of poetry before and so he wrestles now with every poem to unravel meaning from women transformed to swans and stars and willow trees, from bowls of fruit and pools of nectar, from every dew-drenched flower known to botany and oceans of wine. As he and Beatrice read together— not a public reading filled with bright young people who’ve been allowed the indulgence of poetry all their lives, but a private reading, a dialogue between the two of them— Lukas hopes that somewhere between the words on the page, the wine in his glass, and the tap of Beatrice’s fan he will feel that violet spark in his brain, the better to ignite a flame.

_gray_

The road to the capital is paved with more dust than stone. Zofia’s grand avenues now give mute testimony to her decay under the present king, but Lukas keeps these thoughts to himself as he marches. In truth he has very little to say to his new fellows. His peers, the sons of noble houses, ride destriers and coursers from their fathers’ stables. Lukas has no horse because Theo denied him one, so he marches— an infantry man among cavalrymen, little better than a common foot-soldier in the eyes of his peers. It’s just as well they talk over his head.

He is not marching to preserve his father’s estate, coursers and all, for Theo’s benefit. He is not marching for some abstract defense of his invalid mother, for Beatrice and her virtues, for the green fields and citrus groves of his home. King, country, father’s land, motherland, love, honor…

Lukas has no reasons. When a shout goes down the line to bless the king until the end of his days, he hears as though for the first time how quiet his own voice is, how little fervor he can muster. And yet, he does not suppose the other young men set to enlist with the Deliverance love their king by orders of magnitude beyond his own feeling. Something inside him will not allow him to play along with his… comrades.

The crumbling stone beneath his boots leads off to the horizon to blend with the pale sky, a gray so faraway and tenuous it will never bring rain.

_spectrum_

Lukas hums to himself as he turns on the faucet and begins to wash the blood off his hands. 

Where did it come from, this surge of anger like a torrent of molten iron through his body? He’s never felt the like of it before— come close, perhaps, in a moment gazing into flames, or a split-second leap with hornets stinging his face, or as unfamiliar words on a page made a sudden sense beyond the meaning of analysis. What had driven him to thrash a man of higher standing under the crown simply for calling him names?

By the Mother, he’d enjoyed the experience. In the time it takes to scrub clean his hands, Lukas imagines what he now might do, with that fire driving him— march back home and throw his brother to the floor, seize the estate and rule it in accordance with his own talent. Kiss Beatrice and feel sparks as their lips collide.

Outside the stifling confines of his family home, perhaps at last he can live as others do.

This fond delusion lasts until the morning that Lukas stands in an empty camp flanked by the two misfit soldiers who haven’t deserted him, one of whom has no qualms about crediting his own outburst with fueling this disaster. Lukas cannot deny it. He can berate himself for what one intemperate moment has cost them later; right now, it’s his duty to salvage something from the disaster he helped to create.

In his mind’s eye Lukas glimpses again the barren plateau that’s been the journey of his life. There may yet be something on the other side, but for now he must keep on as he has, placing one foot before the other beneath the colorless light of the sun obscured by clouds, able to cast neither shadows nor rainbows. 

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> The "violet spark" in the book of poetry Lukas borrows from Beatrice was inspired by the line "when the blue spark hits your brain" from "Little Creatures" by The Talking Heads, a lyric about sex written David Byrne, who is himself worth a character study. [The Genius page for the song in question describes Byrne as "a socially awkward person who simply couldn’t relate to many human emotions" which is a simplified way of putting it but yeah, interesting dude.]
> 
> I assume being from a noble family that Lukas did indeed learn to ride a horse and might even have been quite good at it, so to explain why he's tromping around on foot like a common soldier my explanation is "shitty bro is shitty."


End file.
